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Understanding how to perform sophisticated searches of online information
will greatly increase your chances of finding what you want. While most popular search engines let you define your search criteria in very specific ways, not all function identically.
Capital Sensitivity
If a search keyword is capitalized, the search engine will return only documents
containing the capitalized word. For example, if you were interested in
documents relating to the country of China, capitalizing the word when using
an engine that supports capital sensitivity narrows the number of results
returned, eliminating documents that relate to china dishes or cookery.
Note however, that in many instances it's better to leave keywords uncapitalized so that the results contain keywords in either form.
Phrase Searching
When using search terms containing more than one word, enclosing them in quotation marks, returns documents containing the exact phrase only. Here's an example: When searching for information
on gun control legislation, using "gun control" eliminates documents
that contain the words gun and control, but not in that order;
possibly in entirely different paragraphs and maybe not even relating to
the topic of gun control.
Truncation
If you are looking for information on gardening, you could use it as your keyword.
However, if your results are limited in number (though not likely with gardening)
and you want to broaden your search, use a root part of the word and abbreviate
it with an asterisk (garden*). The engine will return links to documents
containing gardens, garden, gardener, gardeners, and so on.
Learn the Net (www.learnthenet.com) is
Copyright 1996-2008.
Michael Lerner Productions.
All Rights Reserved.
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